Weed is an excellent indicator of the power and uses of propaganda. From its first introduction in the US as a critical supplier of fiber to the colonies until the recent push for its decriminalization, pot has been passed from group to group as both an industrious worker and devious seductress.

Hemp was one of the first crops introduced to the colonies in the 16^th Century. Since then it has been championed as a savior of the American Revolution by none other than the Father of the United States, George Washington, and it has been the catalyst for several cultural revolutions (or at least complicit to) and also posed as the downfall of all American youth and morality.

Our nation’s founding is written on hemp paper and the soldiers in Washington’s army at Valley Forge were indeed kept alive by the homegrown, homespun, home-woven hemp clothes they wore. Washington himself declared hemp vital to the rebel cause, similar to saving Nylon in WWII.

Hemp as a fiber met its end at the hands of corporate America, just as your right to grow another plant, tobacco, was seized by Tobacco Row to drive their sales of America’s favorite product, cigarettes (most places). The DuPont Chemical company had great interest in linking industrial hemp to such characters as the deviant illegal Mexican and the Jazz negro who seduced young white girls with his slick music and ‘marihuana cigarettes’. And so, Harry Anslinger, the soon-to-be son in law of Andrew Mellon, one of DuPont’s bank pals, was appointed by Mellon to be the head of the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics. DuPont produced chemical products that were in direct competition with hemp, so they married it to Reefer Madness, bye bye hemp, hello DuPont business boom and pollution. Doctors were prosecuted and cannabis in all its forms was dead in the US.

Today the topic of Pot is looking more like a side-show compared to the major malfunctions of American society right now, of which the drug war is one. Its many uses are being re-discovered and, in certain communities, welcomed back. It still bares political stigma and is avoided by most politicians, although that is changing. Possibly the worst thing now for the image of pot is Jeff Spicoli.

SUGGESTED READING: Media Manipulation right in front of you.